Pass the Tome

"I heard the Amyrlin Seat is taking a Warder."  Bennon didn't bother looking up from his weeds.  Leina was a horrible gossip, all the novices knew.  If there was a rumor floating around the well, there was little doubt who dropped it there.  Still, when one of those rumors did happen to float all the way to the surface as legitimate fact, that too was due to Leina's extensive network of 'ears'n'eyes', as she called them; a handful of fellow tongue-waggers such as herself.  Bennon would not believe a word she said without seeing it true with his own eyes; and, even if he did, he wasn't a tongue-wagger himself, so the rumor would go no further than this set of ears and eyes. "They say he might be one of the Asha'man."  She sounded excited, maybe she thought this one had more staying power than the rest.  

Swiping at a sweaty brow with the back of his arm, Bennon sat back on his heels to stuff down the pile of weeds he'd collected in his potato sack.  He glanced over at Leina down the line and was not surprised to see her sack was half as full as his, if that.  At the moment, she was examining one of the lionsteeth she'd plucked, gloved hands clumsily extracting one feathered seed from the puffball, and subsequently bursting the whole thing in the process.  Little white parasols danced away from her through the air in all directions, and she smiled at their choreographed chaos.  

We'll be plucking those too in a few months as well, Bennon thought, dismally, retuning to his own work.  Actually, with the chill in the air, he knew those seeds wouldn't take before the first frost killed them.  Removing them now was merely an aesthetic choice by the Aes Sedai, in this case by one of the Yellows, who apparently had a soft spot for the purity of the gardens. 

"... said that Ely said that she heard one of the Asha'man talking about it," Leina continued, obviously to herself, since Bennon hadn't responded to more than her first question asking his name after they'd been assigned this task together.  Light but he detested idle prattle.  He wondered if he would be punished severely for gagging Leina with a sackful of lionsteeth.

As he plucked, Bennon took in the other occupants of this corner of the grounds.  He and Leina hadn't moved far, but he noticed now there were trainees where there were only novices in the last section.  He could tell they were trainees only by their general uniform and the look of apprehensive relaxation in their eyes - as though they knew a Warder might pop out of the ground at any moment to put them back to work.  Bennon wondered what it must be like to live in their boots, training and practicing and toiling all day.  He wondered if they had to take any history lessons or literary lessons or political lessons or, most asinine of all, mathematical lessons.  Light, Bennon hadn't even seized saidin yet, and yet he was already on his second book in one prolific Brown's class.  He doubted the trainees had to suffer through such classes, or weed their precious grounds.  

Two trainees were sitting against a low wall nearby, talking about one of their instructors.  Bennon slowly crawled a little closer to listen.  Closer still, a familiar face - Corva? Corvinne? - was approaching a third trainee.  She seemed to be performing a chore of her own, with that sling of books wrapped round her chest.  Maybe she was tasked with getting the trainees to read in their spare time.  By the look on that trainee's face, she had a real challenge ahead of her if that was the case. 

"... think Asha'man Ferle would make a fine choice, don't you?" Lein asked and, when Bennon didn't answer, turned to look at him.  He was too busy not watching the trainees and Corvin to notice.  "Babe, are you listening?"  Bennon did look over at that, and she smiled - some of the girls had taken to calling him Babe, due to his shortly-shaved, almost bald head.  "Don't you think Asha'man Ferle would make a fine Warder for The Amyrlin Seat?"  She hadn't moved from her previous position, he noticed, and now she was wearing a half-broken lionstooth behind one ear, several of its loosed parasols decorating her almost black brown hair down to her white dress, where he lost sight of any others. 

"I do no know Asha'man Ferle," Bennon said, honestly enough.  He knew of the Asha'man, had seen him once and had him pointed out by Hahn, but that hardly made him qualified to judge the man.  

"Oh, you're no fun," Fain waved him off, then, only now noticing Corvin, waved to her instead, " Hi, Corvin!" she called, by way of greeting and nothing more.  She finally went back to her weeding, and so did Bennon, eager to be done and free of Lein's tongue as soon as possible.  

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((OOC: Hi, hope you don't mind, but I figured I'd help populate your thread.  No need to include my guy, obviously, he's just pullin' weeds.))